


Nonlinear Strength, Warm and Familiar

by Estel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Depression, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Gen, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 19:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15758067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estel/pseuds/Estel
Summary: During "Do You LIke Teeth" (03x06). Tied to the mast of The Muntjack and fighting off the illusion of his own depression brought on by the key, Quentin finds new strength in a memory from the lifetime he spent completing the mosaic.





	Nonlinear Strength, Warm and Familiar

_“Babe, you can’t listen to all those terrible things you tell yourself,” Eliot told him as he brushed away Quentin’s hair that had fallen across his face. It had been four years of the two of them staring at nothing but the same tiles in the same clearing, and the third day in which Quentin was too morose to get out of bed. “I know they’re – well, that they’re pushy fucks, but you didn’t get here by accident. You’re not good by accident. No one is.”_

-

 _The Muntjac_ rocked gently in the eerily calm sea. Quentin would, in a different mindset, have admired the skill in which Benedict had fashioned the knots that held him to the mast as they were firm, but somehow comfortable.

It had been silent on the deck for a good twenty minutes since Benedict finally left. The key-created illusion of his worst self leaned broodily along the railing, looking over into the dark sea on occasion. “Good, maybe this way you can’t fuck up everyone around you anymore,” his darkest muse snipped away at his conscience. “Quentin Coldwater, the big hero. What have you saved again? Oh, right, you just stepped into someone else’ plan to save Fillory. You murdered a god – oh and you fucked all of magic. Great job on that.”

It had been hours of this relentless barrage as the phantom created by the key made a desperate attempt.

Though tears felt like an admission of the ground that the specter was gaining, he couldn’t withhold them forever and he could feel them matting in his hair. “Please, stop.”

-

_Light trickled in through the rustic window coverings they had cobbled together last year. Eliot had actually managed to settle on a color scheme after two hours at the market. Q made it through half of a mosaic layout waiting for his partner to return from his supposed ‘one hour’ trip. Fond memories began to mix into his crippling thoughts as the fabric caught the warm morning light and shifted it to a soft rainbow of greens, blues, and rose. Eliot’s coaxing to get up had subsided into a comfortable tangle of limbs in bed. At least he felt warm and tethered as he slogged through the suffocating sensation that they would never solve the mosaic and he was delusional for ever thinking so._

-

“Not to mention that you destroy everyone you love because you’re too selfish to help them when they need you.” The persistent illusion ran his hands over the rails and ropes of the beautiful ship. “You have this grand delusion that you’re here helping people, which is pathetic, really. You abandoned Margo and Eliot to be royally fucked by faeries back at Whitespire to go on this hilariously under-planned quest,” he laughed as he stepped up closer to the mast. “You can’t even see how much you have destroyed Alice after she sacrificed everything to save you. Not to mention Julia, who could have really used your help when she was getting raped by a god. But you were too selfish to see that your oldest friend was killing herself to get what you were taking for granted.

“You want to save them? Untie yourself, you coward, and jump.”

-

_Over and over in his head, Quentin played out how ungrateful he’d become about Fillory, about having magic again, about how idyllic this clearing – their clearing – was. It wasn’t just that the trees smelled like an expensive cologne he tried once in high school, or that the sun scattered on the ground mid-day to create a warm glow over the softest grass in the clearing where they had spent now countless afternoons drawing up plans, eating fresh fruits, and reminiscing about their lives before. Every day, it was becoming filled with more trimmings of this new life – the curtains, the blanket that they laid out on to eat their meals they prepared together, even the tiles themselves that had driven him to this catatonic state were becoming imbued with memories. A warm, firm hand traced down his arm as Eliot snatched up his hand to hold him closer still. His steadying breathing permeated Q’s thoughts and his own unsteady breathing settled to match Eliot’s. “There you go,” Eliot mused as he rested his chin on Quentin’s shoulder just at the nape of his neck. “You don’t have to be better now, just be here with me.”_

-

The barrage echoed in his ears as he leaned against the firm mast. His mind’s slippery concoction drew out the familiar sense of being lost in a more metaphorical abyss. Before the bad funhouse version of himself spoke, his mind shifted to the Brooklyn Bridge circa 2014 “If only you hadn’t fucked up your ankle – you would have jumped off the bridge and none of this would be a problem. Not your sad attempt at including yourself in a stupid quest, not losing magic, not even the Beast. All of that is on you and if you were really the hero you think you are, you would have had the decency to throw yourself off that bridge instead of pussying out because you twisted your ankle. It’s too late for all of that, but you could stop yourself from making the same mistake doing any more harm in this world – or any other.”

“Just stop it.” The voice that pushed the words out of him wasn’t the desperate 16 year old who was crippled by uncertainty until he was institutionalized for the first time. It wasn’t the teenager who tried to wash down a fist full of sleeping pills with vodka. It wasn’t a plea for the monster to just go back under the bed. It somehow felt like it had a backbone. The strength felt warm and familiar. Old and firm.

-

_Eliot had left toast on the night stand at some unknown point and gone outside to have deep thoughts on the shape of blue tiles. Unlike the memories Quentin knew through the fog of what was beginning to feel like another life, there was purpose and support just outside the door of their cottage. Though frustration and a crushing sense of futility had driven him into bed in the first place, he could begin to understand the point of getting up. Eliot needed someone to reference the charts and make sure he wasn’t putting down tiles upside down again._

-

“I – I’ve done this so many times,” Quentin let out a somewhat unstable laugh. “I’ve heard your same shit every day for most of my life. But this insane key quest is going to fix it – fix magic and –and its going to give me back the one thing in my life that’s ever made any fucking sense.”

“Brakebills? Fillory? What – you think this stupid ‘quest’ –“ he said with air quotes “- is going to what-? Fix the fact that you’re a fuck up? That you’re a useless piece of shit who just leeches the life out of everyone around you?” His boggart laughed.

“No.”

-

_“Oh, hey, look who decided to join in the fun.” Eliot was sitting in the middle of a quarter-finished scenic-style mosaic. Q had noticed that the more he left Eliot alone with the basic concept, the more it became scenic lately._

_“Hey,” Q muttered as he nibbled on the toast. “Thanks for uh-“ he indicated the toast, but then realized it was more than just toast. “For all of that.”_

_Eliot laid down the tile he’d been fiddling with for a moment and got up. “I get it.”_

_“No, you shouldn’t have to-“ Eliot shut him up with just a gentle touch._

_“I get it.”_

-

The mercy of silence returned. Quentin was unclear as to what exactly about it had reverted the moody shadow of his unwell mind back to staring out at the sea, but he was grateful.


End file.
